Great interview with lots of background details

I found the response to the last question especially endearing. 🙂

http://blogs.mcall.com/lehighvalleymusic/2011/10/talking-with-lucinda-williams-americana-queen-tells-why-her-trickle-of-work-has-become-a-flood.html

October 23, 2011 Talking with Lucinda Williams: Americana queen tells why her trickle of work has become a flood
Posted by John J. Moser at 02:00:00 AM on October 23, 2011

There was a time when Lucinda Williams albums came like raindrops in a drought, just four in her first 18 years as a recording artist, each one hardly quenching the parched tongues of her small but avid fan base.

But since “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” won her a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album and achieved gold status in 1998, Williams’ work has come in a comparative flood.

Her latest disc, 2010’s universally acclaimed “Blessed,” was her fifth studio album (plus a live disc) in the past decade.

In that time, Williams also has appeared on the works of five dozen other artists, tribute albums and collections — a dozen in the past year or so alone. One of those — “Kiss Like Your Kiss,” a song on the soundtrack to the HBO series “True Blood” — even earned her another Grammy nomination.

So what has made the woman Time magazine once called “America’s best songwriter” so prolific at age 58, when many other artists are on cruise control or, worse, faded away?

To hear Williams tell it, she hasn’t changed at all. Rather, in an interview from the road on a tour that Oct. 28 brings her to Allentown Symphony Hall, she says the industry has changed around her.

Here’s a transcript of the interview:

I wanted to talk, still, a little bit about your newest album, “Blessed,” and what you hoped to accomplish with it and how you think it turned out.

“Well, personally for me, it’s the best produced album I’ve ever done. The best sounding album, I think of all my albums. Just production, everything, my vocals on it. Lyrically I’m in a very good place and the song stretch out beyond just your basic unrequited love songs. I’m dealing with different subject matter; kind of branching out there. So I’m hoping it has a wide kind of more universal appeal and everything. You know, it kind of deals with the heartbreak of the world, I think [Laughs].”

Wow, interesting way to put it.

“Humanity, you know? I don’t know. It’s hard to talk about my own stuff, you know.”

Let me follow up on a couple of things you said. You talked about the production – tell me what you thought Don Was brought to the table.

“Well, in a nutshell, I think it was, towards the end, he suggested that we have a couple of tracks remixed by the infamous [studio kingpin] Bob Clearmountain. Bob’s known for working with artists like Bruce Springsteen [he mixed Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA.’] He’s known for having a great ear. And we had already mixed everything, and we weren’t sure about a couple of tracks, either. And Don said, ‘What do you think if I throw a couple a couple to let Bob see what he could do.’ And we said, ‘Sure, no problem.’ And so we gave them to him and got them back and we just went ‘Wow.’ It kind of pushed everything up another whole notch. And so we ended up having him remix the whole thing. That, for me, was something that I never had done on my other albums. Have someone who just … that’s his basic thing, mixing. And the reason we were able to is because of having Don with us.”

And what I have heard so much about you over the years is that you’re such a perfectionist in your recordings. Was it difficult for you to sort of turn over that control in that way?

“No, and I didn’t feel like I was turning over any control, because that how it was working with Don. He was just so comfortable to with and he didn’t make me feel pressured to do anything that I didn’t want to do. The whole general way that I work is a pretty organic process and democratic in that I want everybody to be happy [laughs] and like everybody’s opinions. It’s like a family. My bass player and drummer, we’ve been together now, I guess, about four or five years. We’ve had sort of rotating guitar players, but we’ve got this new guy who’s really, really good – younger guy named Blake Mills. He’s going to be out with us on this run. And Tom, my husband and manager and executive co-producer. We had Eric Liljestrand at the [engineering] board, who was the same engineer on my last two albums. And we ran into Don at this function – it was this Neil Young awards show thing during the Grammys, and I performed and a lot of other artists were there. And Don was in the house band and we just kind of starting talking and hit it off. And so Tom said, ‘What would you think of seeing if Don wants to come in and work with this,’ you know, kind of just to get some fresh blood in the mix [Laughs]. The last album was Tom and Eric and me, and the one before that was Tom and Eric and Hal Wilmer and me. So it’s just good to shake things up a little bit and get a fresh set of ears in there. But he definitely wasn’t … because I wouldn’t have worked with him otherwise. I had to know that going in. That had to be clear, and it wasn’t any kind of thing like, ‘OK, if we go into the studio, you can’t tell me what to do.’ That’s the kind of thing it either clicks or it doesn’t. We met before we started the stuff and talked, and he was involved with this other project with this artist from Italy. So this was like a last-minute thing. He works all the time.

“I listened to some of his albums, like The Rolling Stones album he did, ‘Voodoo Lounge.’ And I had already liked that anyway. [Laughs] And Tom said he did that and I was like ‘Really? Wow!’ But that’s what you generally do – listen to their other stuff before going in. ”

You mentioned about the subject matter of the songs. It just seemed the last couple of albums you got some flak from the critics because all of a sudden you weren’t a “damsel in distress” anymore. This album, I think, is getting pretty much universal good response. I’m wondering whether you think critics are finally accepting that you’re going to write about other stuff?

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it was a critics thing. I can’t imagine anybody being critical about writing other stuff. But I generally don’t read my press anymore. If something good comes out, Tom will read it to me [Laughs]. So maybe that’s why I didn’t see any of that. But I mean, I’ve heard people comment, but it’s more like annoying, to be honest. Like when ‘Little Honey’ came out, everybody was describing it as ‘The Happy Album.’ “

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

“You know, just kind of pedantic. I mean, that’s just – a lot of it, they weren’t saying it like it was a criticism. It was more like ‘Oh, OK, so you and Tom are married, and you’re all settled down. So this is your happy album.’ And I’m going, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I’m an artist, and I still suffer [laughs]. Just because you have a little success and meet the right person, that doesn’t necessarily mean the creative juices stop working [laughs] or whatever.

“But also, the other irony about that is that the songs – a lot of them – were written before Tom and I got together.”

Is that right?

“Yeah, and that was what was frustrating about it. See, when I had all the songs for [2007’s]‘West,’ I essentially had enough songs for a double CD. And that’s what I wanted to do, and the label didn’t want me to, for whatever reason — business stuff, blah, blah, blah, we’ll have to charge too much, and nobody’s gonna want to pay the full price. I wish we’d been able to do that, ‘cause then I could have just gotten all those songs out and gotten them out of the way, and then …

“Cause at that point, everybody thought [the song] ‘Real Love’ was written about Tom. And none of the stuff on there was, except that one, ‘Tears of Joy,’ that I wrote later. But the majority of the stuff was written when I was writing the songs for ‘West.’ I was just going through this period, my mother has recently died, I had been in this tumultuous, destructive, dysfunctional relationship. So it was just that period of time there.

“But the rest of the songs came out on ‘Little Honey,’ everybody thought, ‘Oh! These are all new songs.’ So I have to talk about that all the time. God! And then the whole thing about being happy all the time. Nobody’s happy all the time. How can you be happy all the time? Look at what’s going on in the world? My god, you know? There’s always going to be stuff to write about – the subject matter to write about. Which is kind of what I’m trying to say – there’s more to writing than just unrequited love songs. You know, Steve Earle does that. Bruce Springsteen does that.”

You sort of partially answered one of my other questions, which is that before this album, you had a pretty good run of productivity, where you had like four albums in seven years. Early in your career, your albums cam more spaced apart.

“Yeah, well I’ll tell you the real reason for that, ‘cause I get asked this a lot. [sighs] You know, really – looking back on it, it’s because when I got signed, when the ‘Car Wheels’ album came out, I was signed to Mercury and then ‘Lost Highways’ wad developed, which was still part of Mercury. ‘Lost Highways’ was developed by Rick Lewis, who was the head of Mercury in Nashville and my late manager, Frank Callare who got together because of the success of ‘Car Wheels,’ which was surprising everybody because of the style of music it was. So they said, ‘Well, let’s start a label, a subsidiary of Mercury, around that kind of music.’ So basically I had a home then, and when you’re signed to a record label – I had a six-album, I think it was – you have to put a record out once a year. That’s the general. All my other record labels had gone out of business, folded, whatever. That’s why there was all that kind of inconsistency before that.

“At first I couldn’t even get a record deal, because my music fell in the crack between country and rock. There was no Americana. There was no alternative country. There was no market for that. So I was kind of swimming around, and then I got signed to Rough Trade Records, and went from there to RCA, and that didn’t work out. Then I went to Chameleon, which was part of Elektra. And then they folded. And then I got signed to American, Rick Rubin’s label, and then “Car Wheels” was in the can for a whole year, which a lot of people don’t realize. Because Rick couldn’t put it out – he was in negotiations between Warner Brothers and Sony. So that’s when Danny Goldberg at Mercury in New York bought the masters from Rick Rubin, and that’s the ‘Car Wheels’ album. So you can see how all … But like I said, then I had a home. And that how you see all that consistency.”

I wanted to touch on the fact that you have your first real video now.

“Yeah, yeah. I actually did a video for ‘Passionate Kisses,’ but it was when I was on Rough Trade and they’re a real small, independent label and they couldn’t get it played anywhere and that didn’t really happen.”

How do you think the video for ‘Copenhagen’ turned out? Do you like it?

“I like it. Yeah, it took me a little while to kind of grasp the thing. But I love the guy who did it. He’s the creator of Squidbillies; it’s on the Adult Swim channel. Outrageous – it’s like South Park on acid. [Laughs] It’s just hilarious. It’s not for everybody. But it’s real sarcastic, political satire. They touch on everything. The characters are these – they’re like a hillbilly family, but they’re squid. But they have all of the characteristics of the redneck, hillbilly. It’s just outrageous.

“Anyway, we met them because they asked me to come in an audition to sing the theme song on the current season that’s out right now. … So I went in and they picked me. [Laughs] So if you put it on, the current one, there’s somebody singing the theme song – that’s me. [Laughs].

“So we got to know Dave, and he’s really cool, and it was in Atlanta – he came to our show there when we played there last. I had talked to Tom about, if we were going to do the video thing, I wanted to do some kind of animated thing. You know, I don’t want to be in it, do all that. And so, he said, ‘What do you think about Dave trying to do something with this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ‘Cause I already knew he was a brilliant animator, cartoonish, or whatever you call it.

“He sent us a proof, sent us a reading of it, and I went, ‘Really? A robot? I don’t know.’ Then I said, ‘Well,’ and Tom really liked the idea. And I just said, ‘You know what? This is the one time I’m not going to make a big deal about it. Let’s just … If you like it, and I like Dave, and Dave was really proud of it. Let’s just tell him to go with it.’ “

And I’ll tell you, it’s obviously not literal …

“Exactly.”

But it’s heartbreaking.

“I know! The worried look and … My main concern was that I didn’t know if people would get it, you know, ‘cause it’s not literal. And I thought ‘Are they going to get it?’ But then I got all these responses back like the head of [the record company] Luke Lewis. ‘Cause, you know, I wrote it about my late manager, Frank Callari. So the song is real literal – ‘cause it’s from I actually was there in Copenhagen and it actually was lightly snowing, and so Luke e-mailed me and said, ‘I love it. My tears welled up in my eyes and made me miss Frank so much.’ And my A&R person, same thing. Everybody who knew Frank, of course. Then a lot of people who didn’t know Frank were moved also, ‘cause it just reminded them of losing someone, and just the letting-go thing. That’s my favorite part of it – the end where they’re dancing around and sort of floating up in the sky. [Laughs]”

That gets to me, too. So you said you don’t ever want to be in a video yourself.

“Well, I’ve always been a little camera shy – putting it lightly. I guess it’d be OK. You know, I like those really kind of grainy, black-and-white style kind of stuff. I don’t know. The reason I haven’t done any. In the past, I mean in the ‘90s, they were trying to get me to do videos, and we never could see eye-to-eye. When ‘Sweet Old World’ came out, I was living in Nashville and the label at the time wanted to get me to do something that would fit on CMT. And I’m going. ‘No. No, no, no. That’s not going to happen; I’m not going to do it.’ I wasn’t opposed to doing a video, but why would I want to be less creative with a video than with my album? And the stuff they wanted me to do was just so corny. And I was going, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ And I saw some cool videos, like this one Nirvana did, this really dark and edgy and really cool, and I said, ‘I want to do something like that.’ And I was talking to this one director, and he goes, ‘No, no.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Nobody’s going to watch it. It’s too dark.’ And I said, ‘But Nirvana has one just like it.’ And he goes, ‘That’s Nirvana.’ So they wanted me to do this thing that was just kind of one of those sugar-coated kinda things. So we never could agree on anything till now. [Laughs]

“Now I can pretty much do what I want to do in video. And it’s not the same thing, ‘cause it’s not about Vh1 or MTV. It’s all about the Internet.”

You mentioned your television theme. I also wanted to ask you about the song of yours that was on the HBO vampire series, “True Blood.”

“Well that was Gary Calamar, who’s the musical director for ‘True Blood,’ was already a fan of mine. And he put my song ‘Lake Charles’ in the first season, the very first one that came out. And so I was working for the songs for ‘Blessed,’ and he approached Tom and asked him. He said, ‘I’m looking for some songs for the new season.’ And do we have anything they might want to use. And so Tom met with them and took them a few songs, and one of them was that song, ‘Kiss Like Your Kiss,’ which of course I wrote about Tom. But nobody’s supposed to know that; they think I wrote it for ‘True Blood.’ But it doesn’t matter anyway, ‘cause I think it fits really well, and obviously so did he. I initially cut it for ‘True Blood,’ though. It was the only thing I cut for ‘True Blood.’

And you end up getting a Grammy nomination for it, which is pretty cool.

“Yeah , it was really cool.”

So tell me about your participation in “The Lost Notebooks of hank Williams. I read that you actually cut the song five years ago or something like that.

“Yeah, that’s when I was first approached about it. And it took forever for this thing to finally come out, I don’t know why, nobody really knows why. I guess it was business decisions or something or other kept holding it up. But yeah, I was approached and I was given, I guess, three different sets of lyrics that were all complete. And it was kind of like first-come, first-serve, from what I understand. And I immediately was drawn to this one, ‘cause I thought the lyrics were so unique and so different for a Hank Williams song. Like a happy love song. And I worked with it a couple of days, you know, and came up with this melody, we went in and cut it – I ended up doing it just acoustic. Just me and guitar. And then we didn’t hear anything. It all just kind of went away. And I kept asking Tom, ‘What’ going on with that Bob Dylan project – the Hank project? ‘I don’t know, I haven’t heard back from any … blah, blah, blah.’ And then finally a few months ago we finally heard they were going to release it Oct. 4.”

Yeah, looking forward to it. It will be out by the time you play here, then.

“Yeah. I’m really looking forward to hearing the other tracks, because I haven’t heard anything anybody else has done. Plus, I’ve heard, kind of interesting, I was doing an interview – ‘cause I’ve been interviewed about just that project quite a few times – and what I learned was, apparently some of the artists – I don’t know if there were approached later or when anyone else was approached – but what they received was a half a dozen lines, so they not only had to put music to it, but basically finish writing the whole entire song, lyrically. And my understanding was that there was all these complete sets of lyrics without the music. Like Wilco did with the Woody Guthrie’s song. But apparently they weren’t all complete sets of lyrics, so I guess I was lucky. … Apparently it was quite challenging for some of the artists.”

Earlier when I asked about creativity, I can help but notice over the past few years how many other artists’ work you have appeared on.

“Oh” [Laughs]

It’s just incredible, and I wondered how you felt about that. The only thing I can attribute that to is that so many artists are coming up who you have influenced or continuing to influence that they want to have you with them.

“Yeah, um, that’s probably what it is. [Gets silent] And I guess maybe my name means something on somebody’s album. I love to help other artists, and it’s fun doing those kind of outside, one-off projects. ‘Cause it kind of takes you out of your own head into somebody else’s world. Like I just did a song – it’s like a duet – with Tom Russell on his new album, which is his version of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.’ And it actually made, surprisingly, a Pick of the Week in USA Today.”

I saw that

“I know — that one track. It was so funny. I mean, you never know. We just cut a Bob Dylan song for Amnesty International for a project and it came out really, really good. We did a version of ‘Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door’ off of [the album] ‘Time Out of Mind.’ … So it ended up sounding like something we’d put on our own album. Which is something that Tom and I were talking about. We’re able to take that stuff that I’m doing with other people and if we want to use any of that stuff later, we can. But there’s so much great stuff now, that we were talking about putting a CD of them out or something – a double CD of all the best ones.”

How do you feel being in a position now of, like you said, being able to do what you want, and you are so revered among artists. How does it feel to be in a position like that now?

“Um, well it feels great. I mean, it’s an honor and everything. But you know, I don’t think about it consciously all the time [Laughs]. I mean, Tom reminds me and other people remind me and like what you just said. But I don’t realize it. I’m not aware of it, I guess. I mean, I’m aware of it but … Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m so approachable, too. Like last night we went to see Steve Earle at the House of Blues. And Tom and I were on the guest list and Jesse Malin was in town. We had gone to see his band. They were at the troubadour and we went, and he ended up staying over and going with us to the [Steve Earle] show.

“Well the funny thing is, we got there, and I said, ‘We’re on the guest list – Lucinda Williams plus three. And the guy says, ‘I don’t see your name on here anywhere.’ And so we’re going, ‘Oh God.’ And I’m trying to find someone to help. We finally get in because somebody recognizes me and I explain the situation and then later we ran into the manager, and it turns out he had put us under Tom’s name. He said, ‘it was under Tom’s name. I was trying to protect your privacy.’ [Laughs] And it didn’t occur to us, ‘cause I don’t think that way.”

LUCINDA WILLIAMS, 8 p.m. Oct. 28, Symphony Hall, 23 N. Sixth St., Allentown. Tickets: $39 and $49. Info: http://www.symphonyhall.org, 610-432-6715